Mind the Smoke
by Roland Barphe, director of media studies at the Polyvalente de St-Tite, founder of l'Organisation Uni du Film Original Québécois (l'OUFOq), and editor of Excressences
Over the last three weeks Peterson F. Whalley, Wentworth Sutton, and Jason Capodimonte have provided valuable commentary about the current crisis over Iraq. Their articles have been a refreshing alternative to the mainstream press's crude depiction of the crisis as a showdown between the U. S. cavalry and the unruly natives – the natives won't give up their Winchesters, so the cavalry is bringing the cannon.
Peterson's, Wentworth's, and Jason's articles remind us that human behaviour happens for complicated reasons, not for the simplistic ones which George W. Bush claims motivate him – the appearance of evil in human form as Saddam Hussein, and the need to eradicate it for the good of all humankind – and which go down so well with the mainstream press corps.
Peterson's, Wentworth's, and Jason's articles also remind us, though, that our urge to see the forest often blinds us to the trees. Wentworth criticized Peterson's blindness to any explanation that didn't involve interest, and Jason criticized Wentworth's blindness to simpler explanations than ideological ones. And now I will criticize Jason's explanation of the current Iraq crisis as a result of the stupidity of rich people.
George W. Bush is a Yale graduate. Perhaps he wouldn't have been admitted to Yale if his family hadn't been so prominent, but he succeeded in getting out. Furthermore, an academically more distinguished and less malapropistic president could conduct exactly the same policy as President Bush is and be considered a cunning international strategist – say, didn't that Rhodes Scholar President Clinton take much the same approach to Yugoslavia as President Bush is now taking to Iraq?
President Bush's advisors are more distinguished academically than he, which also calls Jason's explanation into question. As for the role of money, where is the evidence that non-affluent people would act any differently?
Peterson quite properly introduced the philosophy of Sir Karl Popper into the discussion. As valuable as Sir Karl's philosophy has proven to be, the simple fact is that we often cannot frame the null hypothesis necessary to test our speculations about the reasons for events. If we think George W. Bush's policy towards Iraq is based on his and his advisors' stupidity, then we have to be able to specify the type of intelligent behaviour which they will not be able to display. As I just mentioned, a Rhodes Scholar took much the same approach to Yugoslavia.
Speaking of President Clinton, I firmly believe that the so-called health care reform proposals of his first term were intended to be impossible to implement. By introducing an unnecessarily complex health care plan, he generated enough opposition to prevent its passing and damaging the influential insurance industry, while at the same time keeping his promise to make proposals to reform health care (we see here, by the way, how congenial I find Peterson's approach to be). What evidence, though, do I have that my explanation is correct? None at all. I never even bothered to read the proposals.
The long and the short of it is that the Americans elect these guys who do whatever they feel like and we have to try to survive it. One thing they like to do is attack other countries. I don't know why they like to do it, though. An appealing explanation is that they do it because they can, but then that explanation doesn't explain why they haven't bothered to attack us for 189 years. That'd sort out the old softwood lumber dispute, eh?
The mind cannot derive explanations when it does not know facts. In the end, what we know about the motives of George W. Bush and his cabinet and advisors is a void wrapped in a vacuum surrounded by nothingness. All I know is that when they send those Canadian F-18s off to Iraq, I'm not going to be flying one.
Mind the Smoke © John FitzGerald, 2003
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